Owning a Restaurant is Hard

Wondering what the fuck we were thinking since 2013

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Strong Language

Just spending an inordinate amount of time trying to deconstruct the email from our bookkeepers wherein they labeled our weekend sales as "disappointing".

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Everyone Gets Sick All the Time, It's Terrifying, But Everyone Needs to Calm the Fuck Down

I won't accept that it was a mere coincidence that within the first two weeks of the restaurant opening, our 1.5-year-old son had a four-day hospital stay for a staph infection in his knee, which was utterly terrifying, maybe unnecessary, and extremely expensive.

The above sentence is a microcosm of the past year for both our family and our family business: getting sick, freaking out, hemorrhaging money.

A matter fact, stressful moments when we thought all was lost and our business baby wasn't going to make it have consistently and eerily lined up with all the random, anxiety-inducing toddler illnesses our son has come down with, the last episode being the worst.

While neck deep in dissolving our business partnership, our son had back-to-back blister-y toddler illnesses that spiked 103 fevers, over $1,000s-worth of doctors visits, and caused me to drive around endlessly redialing the nurse hotline until I finally figured out that maybe it was me not my son who needed the medication (which it turned out I did).

One particular conversation during this time went like so:

Nurse: Otherwise, is A a healthy child? Me: What do you mean by that? Nurse: Well, does he have any major childhood illness? Me: That's is why I'm calling! How am I supposed to know that?! Nurse: Well, his medical history indicates he's a healthy boy. so you should consider yourself lucky. Some children are not as healthy as yours. Me: Oh. My. God. How do you know that's true. He hasn't eaten solid food for seven days, we haven't slept, I keep going to Dr. and no one is helping us get better. What if has menegitis? He could have meningitis! I read it on the internet. Can you confirm with me over the phone that he does not in fact have menegitis? Nurse: (Silence) Me: I should note that I have a panic disorder and am a hypochondriac, but still, it's possible right? Nurse: M'am, are you driving? Me: Yes. Nurse: You should probably not be driving. I should not have been driving, and I really should not have been panicking either since all it did was damage my own psyche, cause bad decision making, and probably created future phobias in my son, as well. And it turns out, A got better, and the restaurant totally survived the business divorce. I am really hoping that the universe sees now that we have learned this lesson. When things seem like they're falling apart, when death seems imminent or inevitable, when money is hemorrhaging here, and temperatures spike to there, we need to (as much as I hate the phrase), keep calm and carry on and be grateful for what we have going.

Or, as I love to say at least 20 times a day to myself and others, kindly and gently, calm the fuck down. 

Don't throw money at something in a state of panic, don't assume the worst, just take a deep breath, a step back, and wait. It will get better. And if it doesn't, you and I are still going to be okay.

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More Enemies, and They're On The Loose!

Apparently someone turned off our beer-fridge breaker today. 

Our GM took this as an opportunity to inform me that "X" restaurant down the street hates us. Me: "Like, everyone there? Man, we eat there all the time! Love them. Bummer. Man, why do they hate us, we're nice people?"

GM: "Jealous? Just sayin', Could have been them."

Me: "Crazy. Just crazy."

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Service Notes 7/12

Kitchen went down in flames Chef got a little Ramsey on the staff Megan's shoe broke She cried But used tape to fix it Ran out of Pork Chops

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Sometimes all you can do is laugh or else all you would do is cry.

-A lot of people who open a business have probably said this at some point or at multiple points or every single day or at multiple points every single day

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Dear Angry Yelper #1

"If you are looking for good food, reasonable prices, and no hispters then YOU DONT WANT TO COME HERE. $22 for fried chicken, really!. Do we have a chicken shortage going on or something.  The hot dog I ordered was ok, but even if it was delicious I can't imagine paying $14 for a "gourmet" hotdog. Its insane that all these "new" restaurants" can charge the prices they do, guess it explains how most of the new spots are all owned by a small group of people. I won't be back to this place again, and really hope that Oakland does not continue to go the direction it is with the food scene."

Dear Angry Yelper Who May or May Not Make More Than Everyone Who Works For This Restaurant Including The Owners,

First off, thank you so much for your feedback, especially for the ALL Caps portion. Otherwise, we would NOT have heard you!

We're going to go ahead an skip a response about hipsters since we have no idea what actually constitutes being one, and cannot see how being "hip" makes you a bad person to be around and liken it to the assumption that say being "black" or "a woman" makes you a bad person to be around.

So, let's get right to the meat of the issue here: price.

Because you obviously have been on the internet recently (to write this Yelp review, at least!), I'm going to assume you've also read some other things on the internet. I want you to think really hard, now. Have you've read anything lately that may clue you in on why new restaurants in the Bay Area charge what you feel are expensive prices. (And no, it's not because us restaurant owners are making soooooo much money that we're constantly lighting it on fire in fits of cocaine-induced egomania, so you can check that one off the list.)

I'll give you a minute. Perhaps think about the 1 billion posts you have seen about this very subject in your FB feed...

Ready?

Just in case you couldn't think of it, the answer: IT'S BECAUSE EVERY FUCKING THING IN THE BAY AREA IS FUCKING EXPENSIVE. (I hope the ALL CAPS and gratuitous cursing help you hear this news that you maybe missed previously.)

Do you think that new business owners get some kind of discount or clemency or live in an alternate reality where the rent hasn't gone up 70% in the past year. Our rent is just as high, gas is just as expensive, food, and beer, and wine, and every freaking thing. Is. Really. Expensive.

And, sadly, we cannot rightly afford to pay our hard-working professional kitchen staff a living wage (nor can any restaurant for that matter). If we did, you'd be paying twice to three times what you're paying now. So let that one settle in...it's a toughy.

We the owners also would also love to pay ourselves enough so that one of said owners could maybe quit her fulltime day job working at a nonprofit so she could work only one job and spend more time with her two-year-old son. I know, it's a TON to ask of your loyal servants of food and beer.

And as far as there being a shortage on chickens. I'm pretty sure there's plenty to go around, but if you've been to the store lately, a good chicken is going to run you $11-$15, and then you'd have to cook it yourself (gasp!) along with some other things (egads!), and serve it to yourself (NOOOO!), and clean up after yourself (the inanity!).

I'd argue that $22 is a pretty fine price to sit on your ass and have really good food served to you by nice people. But, perhaps that's just me.

Again, thank you for the feedback. We'll be looking for more ways to underpay our staff and ourselves so you can have a cheaper dinner next time.

Warm regards,

The owners

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"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

Lewis Carrol

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When you have kids, you lose friends. When you open a business, you make enemies.

This is the first in the series of posts that will compare opening a restaurant to having a baby* because there are oh so many similarities.

Generally, opening a business is just like having a kid, but way, way, way waaaay harder and more expensive. My rule of thumb is to multiply whatever is hard about having kids (e.g. losing sleep, PPD, having no idea what the fuck you're doing) times a million trillion.

Just last week someone said to me, "Well, you knew what you were getting into, right?" My answer is always a big fat "Nope."

It's really just like sleep deprivation. You don't have a clue what it feels like until you are in it and go from your nice, normal self into a irrational crazy asshole.  

Which brings me to the subject of this first post: making enemies. As someone who has lived her whole life as a people pleaser and a card-carrying nice person, this has been the hardest, most personally challenging part of opening a business.

Already having gone through the lonely new mom thing, I had some idea what it felt like to be either ostracized and avoided (by those friends who don't like kids) and un-liked and un-invited (by those who didn't yet have kids who were over your poop talk and strict rules about when and where you can hang out).

But it turns out, opening a business takes the loneliness and friend-losing stuff to the extreme.

When you invest everything you have (and a solid amount of your parent's retirement) and borrow even more on top of that and pour all of this, plus all your soul, into this insane dream, you become a more-than-occasional irrational crazy asshole who has no time for anything else and friends will probably stop liking you. 

You will lose your shit in front of them, and in spite of them; you will confide in them endlessly about your epic stress level; you will snap at them; and ultimately, you will have little to no time for them; and if you open a business with them or hire them, you may as well give them one last hug before you sign that paperwork.  Also turns out: people love to hate business owners (newsflash!), especially restaurant owners ... even if you are nice people. Culturally, we are trained to hate "the man," whatever that means to you and as a business owner you become "the man" as soon as you start the build out.

You will make enemies in your vendors, staff, your neighbors, co-tenants, landlords, haters of gentrification, people who disagree with your food philosophies, people who hate hipsters,Yelpers. And for whatever reason, because you are a restaurant owner (aka "the man"), you must be a rich, heartless, ruthless sub-human, so people feel they can abuse you (often publicly) without feeling any sense of remorse about it.  

And you just have to keep going it more and more alone, knowing you cannot please everyone or be all things to all people (e.g. we are not a vegan restaurant even if you would like us to be), and that people will assume all kinds of awful things about you.

The big lesson I've learned in all this: all you can do is respect your vision, work hard, and be the kindest person you can be in spite of all the public shaming, stress, and the numerous enemies you make along the way. I am hoping this is just part of what happens in Year One, and that we will make new friends and heal relationships with old ones in Year Two (probably more like Year Three, but it doesn't hurt to hope).

Sincerely, The (Wo)Man

*John and I did both within a two-year period of time. We do not recommend this, but perhaps having the baby first did help us with the shockers that followed when we opened a restaurant. At least I like to think so.

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The awkward moment when your landlord sends you a $15,000 bill for the past year's worth of property improvements.

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Seriously.